You have a windows computer with a configured network printer and want to install it even on a Linux box but you don’t know the printer paraemters.

Discover the printer

Click start->settings->printers. Right click on the printer and select properties. Go on the sharing tab and see how the printer is shared: shared as point. Now you have to discover the printer server address, and to discover it let’s do as you should have to add a new printer. Double click on add printer, next, network printer and next. Select find printer in the directory and next; it will appear a search form. Input in the name attribute the printer name you recently discovered and click find now. In the search result there’s a server name column; take a note of the value.

Debian installation

Here is the packages you need on your Debian system in order to configure the printer. If you wont have them, install them with aptitude

cupsys

cupsys-bsd

cupsys-client

foomatic-bin

samba

smbclient

gs-esp

a2ps

Cups configuration

In order to simplify me the life, I’ve chosen the web interface for configuring the daemon. Once installed the packages you should have it at http://localhost:631/admin. When you’ll access the url, it will be requested you to enter some credentials: I’ve used the root ones. Go to add printer and input the following parameters

name: I’ve used the windows name but you can input what you want, even “MickeyMouse”.

location: the shared windows sharing name.

description: what you like.

then after clicking on continue, I’ve selected the Windows printer via samba as device. Then you will be requested for a device URI: use the form smb://domain\user:password@server/printer_share. Then input the printer model and it’s configured.